


Just a Fluke

by tempered_lemon



Category: DTTW, Dream Team - Fandom, Minecraft (Video Game), Video Blogging RPF, dreamteam - Fandom, mcyt
Genre: And its so sweet, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Depression, DreamTeam, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Minecraft, The Dream Team, Toby Smith | Tubbo & TommyInnit Friendship, Tommy needs a hug, TommyInnit - Freeform, TommyInnit Angst (Video Blogging RPF), Tubbo - Freeform, Wilbur Soot - Freeform, and maybe thearpy, big brother wilbur, dream is worried about tommy, dream team angst, dream team one shot, dreamteam angst, dreamwastaken - Freeform, tommy angst, tommy low key goin through it, worried dream, worried tubbo
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-09-23
Updated: 2020-09-23
Packaged: 2021-03-07 17:47:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,435
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/26611660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tempered_lemon/pseuds/tempered_lemon
Summary: Tommy is going through it and isolates himself and everyone else gets really worried. Hurt/comfort typa beat
Comments: 30
Kudos: 993





	Just a Fluke

**Author's Note:**

> DISCLAMIER: This is about their internet personas and not the creators themselves, please do not misinterpret this. And if any of them state at any point they are uncomfortable with this sorta thing I will delete it no questions asked.
> 
> Also side note, none of Tommy's symtoms are too graphic, I tried to make sure too tone them down as not to trigger anyone or anything like that, but plz do read at your own risk and remember people DO care about u :)

The first day was just a fluke.

When his alarm went off to wake up to film, that felt like the last thing he wanted to do. He had already snoozed his alarm multiple times, severely cutting into his get-ready time, but he was barely thinking of that.

He was supposed to film some new game-mode with Tubbo, Wilbur, and the like, but he couldn’t seem bring himself to get out of bed. The idea of getting out from under the layers of blankets made his stomach twist and his heart rate increase, as if getting out of bed was something he had been dreading.

He checked his phone for the time,

_10:08 am_

he had about an hour before he had to play with anyone. Usually he would use this time to walk his dogs, or just chat with friends, but today the only thing he wanted to do was spend it buried under his comforter, asleep.

When Tommy did wake up it was to the sound of a discord ringtone, it took his brain a second to piece together that that meant he was getting a call. He stared at the notification, not quite awake enough to be thinking clearly. He knew he didn’t want to answer the call, and he knew he didn’t want to play today. If one thing was clear in his mind it was that he was not leaving his bed unless the house was burning around him. Because why should he?

Once the call stopped ringing he quickly scrolled through his notifications. Nothing important or exciting other than a couple missed texts from Tubbo, and of course all the discord chats asking where he was and if he was alright.

_He was fine. He just wanted to stay in bed today._

The rest of the day he drifted in and out of sleep, he didn’t have the energy, or the will, to do much of anything else. He’d made one trip to the bathroom, filling up his water bottle on the way, and pretending not to notice his computer as he walked back into his room. He didn’t want to think about it.

The next time he opened his phone was around 6:00 pm (according to his alarm clock), and it was only because the constant sound of a FaceTime calls were getting really annoying.

He grabbed his phone off the side of his bed and turned it on, giving his eyes a second to adjust to the brightness. Quickly scrolling past the discord messages and missed calls that he had muted much earlier in the day he scrolled down till he got to who had been causing all of the noise. And no surprise here, it was Tubbo. Tommy wasn’t surprised, out of all the people who had his actual phone number Tubbo was the one he actually texted with the most. They talked almost daily, both on screen and off.

Briefly skimming over the texts Tommy felt a slight pang of guilt, his friend seemed genuinely worried that he had missed their plans to play together and that he hadn’t heard from him all day. He opened their conversation to try and assure his friend that he was in fact, still alive, but his fingers froze on the keys. He didn’t really know what to say, how was he supposed to explain why he had been inactive all day.

“Sorry, I just haven’t gotten out of bed for almost 18 hours now”

“My bad dude, I couldn’t find the energy to do anything today”

“Didn’t mean to blow you guys off, I just didn’t feel like having to be alive.”

Yeah… not a lot of options. Now, while all his ideas were technically true, something about admitting he was feeling down to his friends was almost worse then the actual feeling down part. It felt… embarrassing? In a weird way. Tommy was _really_ not one to open up about his problems, and that had been going fine for him so far, but at this point he had dug himself so far into the hole of ‘ _no serious talk_ ’ that he wasn’t quite sure what to do now that he needed some guidance.

His text to Tubbo ended up being a simple “sorry bro, slept in late today, my bad 😎”. And with that he powered off his phone and flopped back onto his bed.

_He was fine. Today was just a fluke._

_~ The next morning (day two)~_

When he woke up it was not to an alarm or a ringing phone like the day before, it was instead to a dull ache in his stomach that had been getting progressively worse throughout the night until it eventually woke him up. The feeling was very easily distinguishable as hunger, and with a quick glance at his alarm it was easy to see why, it was nearly noon.

It took him much longer than he cared to admit to haul himself out of his bed and down the stairs to his kitchen. But he didn’t really know what to do once he got there. His stomach ached for food but he had no appetite what so ever, the thought of eating anything made him feel nauseous.

In the end he settled on a few crackers and a glass of water, not much but it was the only thing that sounded remotely appealing at the time. He just hoped it would be enough to spare him from making any more trips out of his room for a while.

The rest of the day was mostly spent doing absolutely nothing. Tommy had already slept _much_ more than usual and couldn’t seem to drift off again. But at the same time he felt _so_ tired. Like the feeling you get when you wake up in a friends house and don’t quite know where you are, or when you accidentally doze off and don’t know whether its night or day when you wake up. No matter how much sleep he got he just couldn’t shake the weird daze his head seemed to be stuck in, but he would forever chalk it up to just being a little under the weather. I mean, that’s what he did every other time, and the feeling always went away eventually.

He hadn’t made any plans to play with anyone today, none that he remembered at least. Initially he had planned to use today for editing, but the idea of sitting down to edit for hours was enough to convince him that it could wait another day… or maybe a couple.

After about the 9 o’clock mark doing nothing was starting to get boring. Tommy was tempted to check his phone, but he was somewhat afraid of having to deal with whatever messages were waiting for him on it.

After another half hour of staring into nothingness he eventually decided that he would manage with whatever he found.

Sure enough, the second his phone had finished powering back on he watched as message after message started to slowly load in. He had to have gotten _at least_ 20 texts from Tubbo alone, and surprisingly enough he even saw Wilbur’s name buried under 100 other random notifications from Twitter or Reddit and what not. And the least surprising was all the notifications from the Discord group chat, he tried to scroll past them and pretend they weren’t there but a few caught his eye, things like;

“Tommy you joining tn?”

“yo Tommy r u not streaming tonight??”

“guys maybe hes sick or smthin”

He didn’t even bother opening the notifications, he had nothing to say to any of them, he didn’t have any excuse prepared yet.

He instinctively opened up Twitter, his fingers opened it up without him really having to think about it. He scrolled through, liking a few posts here and there, but not actually responding or commenting on anything. As he scrolled through his timeline his mind was in a complete other place, he was barley processing any of the posts he read, he was more focused with whatever thoughts were currently going through his mind.

His mindless scrolling only came to a stop when the notification appeared telling him that he got a DM from Wilbur asking if he wanted to play some new game with him. Without thinking Tommy clicked on the message, opening up their whole chat where he could see all the texts and missed call from the day prior. He mentally cursed himself for opening the notification, because now it would be marked that he read the message when he had been planning on just ignoring it.

After a minute of just staring at the screen, trying to think off a good response he decided that his best bet at this point was just to pretend like he hadn’t seen it. With that he swiped out of the chat and opted instead for some mindless arcade game he had on his phone.

The rest of his night was uneventful, he spent a good chunk of the night watching his friends streams, hearing their voices made him feel a little better. But he also noticed how much calmer everything was without his bold presence around, everyone on stream was just quietly laughing and talking together. No drama, no screaming, nobody was there yelling insults and curses at anyone, it was strangely peaceful.

He wasn’t the only one that noticed the change in group demeanor though, chat was relentlessly talking about how calm it was, or there were even people who were asking where Tommy was. It actually felt sorta nice to know people realized he was missing, that was until he looked a little closer at some of the comments. People talking about how much nicer it was without him there, or how it was a nice break from their usual annoyingly loud content.

Tommy was no stranger to hate comments, and they usually didn’t bother him at all, but these felt different. Maybe because no one knew he was there so the comments hadn’t been intended to get a rise out of him (sorta like when someone talks about you behind your back) or maybe because it was because they were all things he had been considering the last few days.

He eventually decided to close the chat from his screen, and just enjoy watching his friends play, but then the donations started.

_Castrol.3: **Is there a reason Tommy isnt playing with you guys?**_

The donation had been to Tubbo, who took a break from his current task to re-read said donation.

“Umm… Tommy doesn’t really like Among Us so he didn’t wanna play with us tonight” The rest of the group went weirdly quiet while Tubbo answered the question, and no one else had any thing to add to it, making the whole moment seem weirdly tense.

But the one donation seemed to have sparked many more in their tracks, and pretty soon all the members who were streaming at the time started getting multiple donations relating to Tommy.

Tommy did his best to ignore them but felt bad, he felt bad that people talking about him was getting in the way of his friends game. He already felt like a problem as it was, the last thing he wanted was random fans driving his friends crazy with a million questions about him.

He was so lost in thought he almost missed the automated voice of Tubbo’s most recent donation.

_JetLag:_ **Im glad you guys finally did a stream without tommy, hes so obnoxious it gives me a headache. idk how you guys stand it**

Tubbo froze, completely forgetting about the game. Tommy watched through the screen as Tubbo completely turned his chair around to face the camera, and he looked _pissed_.

“First of all to any mods in the chat someone please ban whoever sent that. I don’t want you on my channel if all you’re going to do is hate on my friends.” Tubbo’s face remained scarily calm the whole time.

Everyone else in the call had gone silent, Tubbo _never_ got mad at anyone, for any reason. Not actually mad anyway. So they all assumed it must be pretty serious to get him worked up. And while no one else had heard the specifics of what the donation said, based on Tubbo’s reaction they could all pretty well assume.

“And secondly, you’re wrong. Tommyinnit is the funniest guy I know and he’s my bestfriend so if you-”

Tommy closed the stream. He felt sick to his stomach, like he was gonna throw up. He felt guilty that he had indirectly interrupted their stream and seeing all the hate towards him wasn’t helping much either.

It was gonna be a long night.

_It’ll pass, tomorrow will be better._

~ _The next morning (day three)~_

Turns out that two days in bed tends to make your legs cramp up, a problem Tommy was currently struggling with. He tried getting up and pacing around his room but that just seemed to make things worse, so he begrudgingly started to make his way downstairs to the medicine cabinet.

He somehow got lucky enough that none of his family was there, he could only guess how rough he must look after moping around in his room the past two days. He passed through the kitchen briefly checking in the cupboards for anything that appealed to him, he hadn’t even realized how hungry he was till he was staring at the food. After some hard mental debate about what he should have, he decided on a single piece of sourdough bread. Not something he would usually pick, especially not by itself, but he wasn’t feeling in the mood for anything more exciting than that.

They kept the majority of their medicine in one of those fancy cabinets that were behind the mirror, so while Tommy was searching for something to help his leg, the mirror was out of sight and out of mind. But after closing it he got his first real look at himself in days, and it was _rough._

Dark bags had formed under his eyes, but his eyes themselves looked darker than normal. His blonde hair was flat and greasy against his head, as opposed to it’s usual fluffiness. Every part of his face just looked… deflated.

He splashed some water in his face with some hand soap, in hopes that it might do something to help him look more like himself. And while it made his skin feel nicer to have been washed, the reflection in the mirror didn’t change. He contemplated taking a shower, but he couldn’t bring himself to go through all the trouble, so instead he made his way back up to his room.

At 6:00 pm, an alarm went off on Tommy’s phone, it was a thirty minute reminder for a stream on the SMP with Tubbo, Dream, Wilbur, and whoever else wanted to join. While the invite was informal and so Tommy could probably get away with skipping, he felt bad skipping out on everyone three days in a row, and the thought of hearing everyone again sounded nice. So he set a alarm for two minutes before they were all supposed to start, he figured if he wasn’t going to be streaming then he didn’t have any reason to get dressed or tidy his room or anything of the sort.

He sat down at his desk at 6:30 exactly. He knew everyone else would be signing on right then so he had made sure to start a little later hoping that he could slip into the call while they were all doing their intros or something… he didn’t want to cause a scene with everyone asking where he’d been.

Minecraft was open and left waiting with his mouse just hovering above the join button, his headphones were plugged in and he had some low key music on in the background to help with his nerves. He had discord open on one of his screens but was just staring at the voice call. Everyone else seemed to have already joined seeing as there were already about seven people in, those people being Dream, George, Sapnap, Tubbo, Wilbur and a few others who were just on mute.

Joining call had never been a big thing for him, he never really had issues with putting himself out there or with meeting new people. But for some reason the thought of joining the voice channel full of his closest friends made his heart beat a little faster and his mouth suddenly dry.

He took a deep breath trying to get back into a more excited version of himself, they couldn’t see him which he was glad about so he wouldn’t have to worry about looking like his normal self, but he still had to make sure that his voice sounded as upbeat and chipper as usual.

With one final burst of confidence he joined the call before he could back out of doing it. He heard the little ding sound signaling that he had joined, and then all he could do was hold his breath and pray that no one noticed his arrival.

“-could try and find some over- wait what was that….” Tubbo seemed to have been half way through a sentence when he heard Tommy join.

“Did someone just,” Georges character froze as he switched tabs to see who had joined their call.

Tommy visibly cringed but didn’t say anything. He had been hoping no one would notice his joining and that he could just casually slip into the conversation later, but that wasn’t looking like that would be happening anytime soon.

“TOMMY!!”

“Wait, Tommy’s here!?!”

“YOoOooOOO”

Tommy had to admit, it was nice to hear everyone’s voices again, and for what its worth everyone seemed pretty excited to see him, which made him smile to himself a little.

“Hey guys.” His voice sounded hoarse after having barley been used for the past few days, and the words felt awkward and weird on his tongue but in the moment he didn’t really know what else to say. What was there _too_ say?

“Dude where have you _been_?” Sapnap, surprisingly, was the first to bring up the elephant in the room.

“Yeah I’ve missed you, are you doing ok??” Usually Tommy would make a joke out of Tubbo’s caring nature but now didn’t seem like the time, and it didn’t really seem all that funny.

“Yeah I’ve just been… around, ya know.” What the hell was he saying “just catching up on some work here and there, just doing whatever comes up.” He finished lamely. He cringed inwardly, so much for a believable cover story.

There was a moment of silence after he was done talking, as everyone waited for someone else to speak up.

“Ummm… are you sure you’re ok man?” Dream spoke up, everyone else quickly mumbling their agreement in the background.

“Never better!” Tommy tried his best to make his voice sound upbeat but the queasy feeling in his stomach made it hard to keep the anxious tone out of his voice.

“Ummm”

“If you say so…” Sapnap responded, clearly not convinced.

Tommy just hummed in response, not trusting his voice to not give him away.

A few minutes passed without anyone saying anything, and Tommy had almost convinced himself he was in the clear until he got a private chat from dream.

 _Dream whispers to you:_ Join vc 4

Tommy read the message before looking over to his screen with Discord open to see who was in the call. Dream, Wilbur, And Tubbo were all in the voice channel.

No thank you Dream, that sounds like an awful idea. Absolutely not.

 _You whisper to Dream:_ Why

 _Dream whispers to you:_ Tommy.

 _Dream whispers to you:_ You know why.

Damn. This was not going as smoothly as he had hoped.

He quickly realized that there was no getting out of this and that not joining would only make the situation worse. So he sucked up whatever pride he had left and joined their call.

“Oh! Hey Tommy.” Tubbo was the first to notice him join the call.

“Hey Tubbo, what’s this whole mess about?” Tommy cut straight to the point, wanting to know why they felt it necessary to bring this problem into a separate call. He had only missed like two, three days, it really wasn’t a big deal. He was fine.

“Tommy, dude, where have you _been_ the last few days? You just dipped off the face of the Earth, didn’t answer anyone when they tried to reach you, and then come back today like nothing ever happened??” Dreams voice edged on angry, but it was painfully obvious that is was for no reason other than out of concern.

Tommy chose not to say anything, figuring it was better to let them get it all out of their systems before he spoke up.

“Tommy, you know you can talk to us right? None of us are streaming right now if that’s what you’re worried about.” Wilbur added, his voice softer than normal, as if he was telling a bedtime story to a younger child.

“I really don’t know what you guys are all on about, nothings wrong. I just… took a little break for a few days! Nothing wrong with that.” New plan; deny, deny, deny. Nothing was wrong, nothing is wrong, Tommy’s never been better.

“If it was just a break then why didn’t you answer my texts? Or my calls? Are you cross with me Tommy, is that why you’ve been avoiding us all? Because we did something?” Tubbo’s voice cracked near the end which made Tommy’s heart leap to his throat. Had he made Tubbo feel like he had been responsible in some way? The was the last thing he had intended to do, he felt a hot pang of guilt in his stomach at the thought.

“Tubbo I- no of course not, you didn’t do anything wrong at all.” If Tommy had known that Tubbo felt at all responsible for his sudden aloofness then he would’ve forced himself right out of that bed and smacked a smile on his face, even if it killed him. The thought of putting his best friend through that made him sick to his stomach.

“Then what happened Tommy!? If you weren’t angry and you weren’t _dead_ then why??” Tubbo snapped at him.

Tommy was momentarily taken aback, this was the second time this week he’d heard Tubbo get mad. And the small voice in the back of his head made sure to let him know that both times were because of him, which made him an awful friend, but ignoring that for now Tommy was more worried about how to fix this.

“I don’t know I just….” A part of him knew the reason he didn’t just tell them why was because he wasn’t sure himself. He knew something was wrong, but he had just never wanted to figure out what.

“You know you can talk to us right? We would never judge you or anything like that, not if it’s important.” Wilbur assured.

“No no, that’s not it”, Tommy grumbled out, “it’s just that _I_ don’t even know what happened! So how am I supposed to explain that to all of you??”

There’s nothing but silence from the others, no one knowing quite what to say after Tommy’s confession.

“Then… how about you just tell us what you’ve been doing these past few days and we can work out the rest together.” Dream suggested.

The other two echoed their agreement with Dream’s idea while Tommy was frantically trying to decide his best course of action. He eventually came to the conclusion that his best bet was to just tell them the truth and move on, and if anything went wrong he could just laugh it off and say he’d joking the whole time. Not a great plan, sure, but it was as good as he’d got.

After about a minute of internal debate he finally agreed to talk about what had been going on.

He told them about not having the motivation to get out of bed in the mornings, and how he slept all day but was still tired no matter what he did. He told them about how watching their streams and seeing the hate comments had been harder for him than usual seeing as he had already been doubting how much he really meant to his friends (and at that point the other three just had to interrupt to share how wrong he was in thinking so).

They all listened attentively as Tommy talked about the guilt he had been feeling towards his friends, and his need to isolate himself from them. But they were most surprised when he told them that this had happened before, that sometimes when he blew off recordings or said he was sick for a week, he had just been going through all of this alone.

When he was done he held his breath and waited for his friends responses. He was met in return with nothing but positivity and support from them.

They talked for a while after that, they had somehow even convinced Tommy to go and talk to a professional about what was going on (Wilbur had even threatened to drive down and force Tommy into the doctors office if he hadn’t agreed).

From there Tommy felt comfortable telling a few other people what had been going on with him, and those who he told had also had nothing but nice things to say.

He made his appointment with a professional to go and see what had been up with him, and all in all he was doing a lot better.

He still had his bad days every now and then, but now he didn’t push people away when the tried to help him. On the days he stayed in bed he would spend that time on the phone with Tubbo, sometimes just sitting in silence enjoying each others company. And on the days he felt like he wasn’t good enough Wilbur and dream would talk about how proud they were of him for accomplishing so much and still being such a great person and friend. So while yes, Tommy still had days that were a little harder than others, but he now knew he had people who cared about him, even if he couldn’t always see it.

_No more flukes, he would be okay._

**Author's Note:**

> dont live ur life just to get to the next day, you're worth so much more than whatever you're going through. if u ever wanna talk my dms are always open :)


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